‘For Good’ is in the eye of the beholder
The disconnect between Indigenous worldviews and Western knowledge in AI may wildly skew our future
By Shani Gwin
Before I left for Geneva, Dr. Leroy Little Bear was on my mind. One of the concepts he talks about in Western Science, is the belief researchers have that everything is inanimate outside of humans and animals. It’s about measurements and matter. However, the Blackfoot (his People) believe everything in nature (rocks, plants, water, the wind) is animate – and science is about relationships.
“Blackfoot Science is largely based on relations. It is about ‘all my relations.’ You can say, "if it is not about relations, it is not science.”
This aligns with many Indigenous cultures. Everything has a spirit and therefore has knowledge to be shared. When Dr. Little Bear spoke at a Calgary City Council meeting in 2022 he reminded attendees how intimate the relationship is when we make decisions about innovation, technology and attempts to ‘improve’ our lives.
“Only 3% of all the water on this Earth is freshwater. And the six to seven billion people on this Earth, that’s what they depend on is that 3%. Stop and think about it. You and I, every adult human being, is at least 65% water. A brand new born baby is probably 75% water. So, what you do to the water, you do to yourself.”
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I attended the AI for Good Global Summit to present alongside my peers at TELUS. As one of their Indigenous Advisory Council members, they offered an opportunity to talk about our work together and also share pipikwan pêhtâkwan’s project, wâsikan kisewâtisiwin. With 15,000 attendees from across the globe, each day was packed with speakers, workshops, meetings, robotics demonstrations, networking opportunities, and much more.
The first night we attended an evening networking event. When I walked in, there was a mannequin head with metal and robotic arms, and overtop it wore a satin dress. This was Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic humanoid robot artist, which has apparently hosted a solo exhibition at Venice Biennale. Ai-Da was standing beside a painting it had created of Queen Elizabeth. I looked at Ai-Da and it blinked back at me.
Later in the evening, ballet dancer and quantum physicist Dr. Merrit Moore performed. Due to the pandemic and inability to dance with a partner, she programmed a robot as a replacement. I watched her performance - she was a beautiful dancer and had wonderful energy. However, when I watched the performance with the robot I felt pulled out of my connection with Dr. Moore. The robot moved somewhat gracefully to mimic her and shone a little light out of its ‘head,’ which felt like a bit of warmth it desperately needed. During her second performance, I watched from the food line where I met the lovely Gabriel Fonlladosa, who works with data354 using AI to monitor mangrove biomass and carbon stocks for climate action. They lead AI-driven initiatives focused on climate resilience, forest monitoring, and public health across West Africa.
The next day, we went to the opening plenary of the summit. Political heads were doing their welcomes and acknowledgements when two people ran on stage in protest and called out big tech’s complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. The United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) partnered with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Cisco, Oracle, and IBM on the Summit - big tech companies complicit in atrocity crimes by providing cloud infrastructure and AI technologies to the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Something I was not fully aware of, to be honest. The two folks were escorted out, and the summit continued with another political address before Amazon’s Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Werner Vogels, came to the stage. A bit of an awkward transition… given the previous message about his organization.
Dr. Vogels was a polished speaker - he shared a story about his friend who went missing while sailing in 2007. They called on their connections and literally pointed satellites in the area his friend was last known to be, but were still unable to locate him. Vogels explained that with the data and technology available to us now - maybe they could have found him. While talking about ‘third world countries’, Vogels explained how beneficial it could be if they shared more of their mapping data-helping in massive disasters. I thought about those young girls in Texas who were still missing after the flash flood. ‘Do these young, American girls matter enough to point satellites and use the collective data to find them in the most powerful country in the world? If not for them… why would they do it for Haitians after an earthquake? Or 12 million people fleeing their homes in India, Nepal and Bangladesh after monsoon rains? They would do it for a white male sailor (with the right connections) lost at sea.’
After a cinematic trailer promoting Amazon’s inaugural climate and disaster management cohort the next slide read, ‘Data sharing is a moral imperative.’ Vogels then proclaimed, to a room full of people struggling to undo harms Amazon actively contributes to, including the environmental impacts of overconsumption… “choosing not to share (your data) is choosing not to help. Sitting on data and capabilities while the world burns, you’re complicit in the problem.” My jaw hit the floor. As a friend of mine would say, “the caucasity!” I thought, is this what I am in for this week?
My prayers were answered when Dr. Abeba Birhane took the stage. She wore a keffiyeh and shared what we all needed: a serious dose of reality. I felt like I had found my people, especially when she shared, “calls to tackle complex, historical, and political issues using current AI systems is like building with rotting wood and expecting a palace.” She was courageous-holding the UN and big tech accountable throughout her keynote. I remember noting she seemed nervous. At times her voice shook, which I can relate to. I wrote it off that talking about difficult things can be difficult. At another session of hers about human rights and AI that same day, I noticed the moderator only seemed to facilitate the conversation when she was speaking. None of the other speakers were asked to wrap it up except for Dr. Birhane. So, a few days later, when this article was brought to my attention by the pipikwan pêhtâkwan media team - everything clicked. Dr. Birhane was censoring her slides and keynote minutes before she went on stage to appease the summit organizers. She was unable to fully express what she intended but she still did what was right and took a stand.
As I walked around the summit, witnessing the creations of humankind and listening to the various speakers, Dr. Little Bear kept popping in my head, “relationship is science.” I was surrounded by the clear lack of relationship modern society has with the natural world, and with each other. While I understand many of the solutions being presented at the summit, I couldn’t help but feel sad. Sad that we need cute little robots that mimic empathy and respond with matching facial expressions for social care; or a personalized teddy bear that provides support for children which is marketed as a trusted friend, mentor and emotional guide. And a doctor dancing with a robot.
It amplified to me how isolated and alone many human beings feel at this moment in time - many of the solutions were about how to help humans feel seen, heard or cared for – by a device. It is unnerving how many of those solutions were created to have human characteristics - either in speech or appearance. In a world where social media and the internet were marketed as ways of improving our connection to one another - to build on our relationships - I can’t be the only one who sees how it has done the opposite. Lessons are still going unlearned. Many of us still encourage direct relationships with technology over humans as the solution.
I walked away from the summit wondering why we aren’t building technology that encourages and values the relationships and connections with other people, animals, water, the wind and the land - those are more sustainable solutions. For instance, one of the incredible people I met while I was there was Dr. Eric Tutu Tchao, who shared more about their project, Smart Indigenous Weather App. The solution connects machine learning with traditional knowledge from Indigenous Peoples in Ghana to predict weather patterns and provide climate-smart farming solutions. Dr. Tchao shared that before incorporating Indigenous knowledge, the AI had a prediction accuracy of 50 per cent. Now, it has an accuracy of 80 per cent, which recently provided an opportunity to successfully plant and harvest during a drought.
When I shared with my Dad where I was going and what I was going to be doing - you could not shake his pride. It’s an honour as his daughter to be able to evoke that in him. I took that feeling with me while I was there. It was strange to feel so much pride and honour around the symbolism of where I was and what we were doing, while encountering so many moments of sadness, exhaustion and deep concern at a summit branded ‘for good.’ If you searched the word “Indigenous” on the summit’s app, our workshop was the only one using that as a descriptor. It’s the same descriptor that resulted in being invited to speak on a panel at the United Nations the following week.
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Since I was small, I’ve gone fishing with my Dad. He taught us how to remove the hooks on our own, which fish we could keep, and how to gently reintroduce the fish to the water when we put them back. I remember as a kid, it was so fun to catch the fish and I wanted to keep them all. But, when we got back to the marina we had to filet the fish. Dad did this part but I had to watch him knock them on the head and clean them. He was often the only one at the fish cleaning station who would cut out the cheeks and barely left one piece of fish on the bones. Then, we cooked the fish and feasted - my sisters and I would fight to get the cheeks. I remember him cleaning a fish when I was young in our kitchen, and my great grandma popped a fish eyeball into her mouth like a grape, “yum!” she exclaimed. My own eyeballs, I’m sure, were falling out of my head in shock.
Before I attended the summit, I spent 10 days camping with my kids and extended family. My Dad took us out fishing, and the fish were biting! I watched Dad reel them in, how he put the really big and tiny ones back. This time, I’m one of the teachers on the boat - showing the kids which ones are too big or too small, how to take the hook out, and holding the fish for them before gently releasing their catch into the water. The relationship is established; it’s a science. We only take what we need, and we release the rest to sustain future generations. We watch the fish give their life for us so we can eat dinner that night. We watch my Dad take every piece of meat off the fish before he moves on to the next fish- nothing is wasted. Dinner was a different experience for us all that night - we worked for our meal. More importantly, we experienced and were reminded of relationship.
As Dr. Little Bear says about our investment or impact in any relationship - water, land, animal, people, “you do it to yourself.”
